As I whipped around, Bob lowered his head and charged. There would be no avoiding the forge; he was going to knock me straight into the flames. He’d almost reached me when a tan streak shot in from the side, hammering him from view.

Cassius.

He snarled, chomping down on Bob’s beard and shaking his head violently.

Bob drew back a massive arm and swatted the seventy-pound dog aside as if he weighed no more than a hamster. Cassius struck one of the heaps of ammo sideways, rounds flying everywhere, raining across the floor.

With a single lurch, Bob hurled himself from his back onto his feet. He spun the shackles around his hand and charged again.

None of my weapons were in reach.

But something else was.

I reached for the blackened handles sticking up out of the forge and ripped the tongs free. As Bob came at me, I raised the glowing yellow tips up to the level of his eyeholes and let Bob’s weight carry him onto them. He impaled his face on the tongs, the membranes popping, the hot metal sinking deep, winding up somewhere near the middle of his head. I clenched the handles hard, cinching the tongs inward toward his brain. His eyes fizzled around the hot metal. Black sludge poured into the eyeholes. Noxious smoke drifted from his ears and nose, his mouth foaming.

With the tongs embedded in his face, he fell to his knees and stayed there, kneeling, motionless, his head dipped as if in prayer.

Snatching up Alex’s bag, the revolver, and my hooks, I shot for the door, wanting to get clear after all the racket we’d made. Cassius and I ran from the hardware store. I dove across the hood of the same car we’d hidden behind earlier, Cassius bounding around the grille. On the sidewalk I flattened to the ground, peering through the tires, my dog beside me.

Nothing.

Then a set of legs walked past, just on the far side of the car, heading for Bob n’ Bit.

I looked at Cassius, put a finger to my lips. He understood the command. I lowered my head further so the cowboy hat wouldn’t poke up into view.

When I looked back, there were two sets of feet shuffling by. Then a flurry more. The parade kept coming, though I could only see the Hosts from the knees down. I lay there, breathing, until the torrent slowed.

A last set of boots trudged by, and then there was quiet for a good long time.

At last I risked a peek through the car windows.

I couldn’t see in the hardware store, but the rear door was rolled back, shadows of Hosts thrown about the walls.

I snapped my fingers at Cassius and ran a brief distance up the sidewalk, my baling hooks raised as I ducked into the first doorway.

The general store.